Interview with Robert Joseph Curran, July 18, 2005

Nevada Test Site Oral History Project University of Nevada, Las Vegas Interview with Robert Curran July 18, 2005 Las Vegas, Nevada Interview Conducted By Suzanne Becker © 2007 by UNLV Libraries Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews conducted by an interviewer/ researcher with an interviewee/ narrator who possesses firsthand knowledge of historically significant events. The goal is to create an archive which adds relevant material to the existing historical record. Oral history recordings and transcripts are primary source material and do not represent the final, verified, or complete narrative of the events under discussion. Rather, oral history is a spoken remembrance or dialogue, reflecting the interviewee’s memories, points of view and personal opinions about events in response to the interviewer’s specific questions. Oral history interviews document each interviewee’s personal engagement with the history in question. They are unique records, reflecting the particular meaning the interviewee draws from her/ his individual life experience. Produced by: The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project Departments of History and Sociology University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 89154- 5020 Director and Editor Mary Palevsky Principal Investigators Robert Futrell, Dept. of Sociology Andrew Kirk, Dept. of History The material in the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project archive is based upon work supported by the U. S. Dept. of Energy under award number DEFG52- 03NV99203 and the U. S. Dept. of Education under award number P116Z040093. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these recordings and transcripts are those of project participants— oral history interviewees and/ or oral history interviewers— and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U. S. Department of Energy or the U. S. Department of Education. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Robert Curran July 18, 2005 Conducted by Suzanne Becker Table of Contents Introduction: birth ( St. Louis, MO, 1934), childhood during WW II, family background, education ( University of Missouri, 1956), military service ( U. S. Army) 1 Transfer to Special Services, NTS, Las Vegas, NV ( 1957), impressions of Las Vegas and the NTS 11 Work at the NTS: entertainment coordinator, variety club for military troops at Camp Desert Rock 13 Participation in Operation Plumbbob and reactions to effects of atmospheric testing 19 Work with Canadian troops on Smoky ( 1957) 28 Effects of “ dirty blasts” ( radiation exposure) at the NTS 32 Opinion on nuclear testing at the NTS during the Cold War, and a little history on the Korean War 36 Comments on racial composition of troops ( African- American and white), suicide, and court- martial at the NTS in 1957 39 Examples of the Cold War era as a dichotomy: McCarthyism, school desegregation 44 Finding mementoes of the NTS years, and family feelings about his job there 45 Military career after posting at the NTS 47 Political career in Missouri 49 Conclusion: remarks on being a good influence on people 50 UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Robert Curran July 18, 2005 in Las Vegas, NV Conducted by Suzanne Becker [ 00: 00: 00] Begin Track 2, Disc 1. Suzanne Becker: Go right ahead. Robert Curran: You need my name? Yes. My name is Robert Joseph Curran. I was born August 31, 1934 in St. Louis, Missouri. OK. Talk a little bit about your childhood, some of the things that we’ve been talking about. OK, well, I always considered myself a representative of the development of the middle class because when I was born, I was born in a four- family flat, rear entry, upper level, brick, no air conditioning, of course, no central heating, no hot water, in which my mother cooked on a coal stove. Not a gas stove, not an electric stove. Coal. You put coal in there. Which we had little coal heaters. And it was what you call a “ shotgun house,” which we could shoot a shotgun in the front door and it’d go out the back. Right. It’s one of those long houses. Right, long. And we had an icebox, not a refrigerator. My father was a bellhop in a hotel. My mother was a hairdresser who ran away on July 4, 1925, Pontiac, Illinois, and got married. And I’m the youngest of three children. OK. And what are your siblings’ names? My sibling Doris Elizabeth, who is better known as Sister Mary Denis, who is a nun. She is seven years older than I am. And my brother is Thomas Patrick, and he is a retired chief technical writer for Martin Marietta Corporation. But he’s five years older than me and he’s retired. I’m the baby. And that’s it. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 2 And did you grow up in St. Louis? Lived my entire youth and life in St. Louis and I moved when I was like thirty- eight but I’m still in St. Louis, basically. I became the prosecutor of Jefferson County in 1973, which is the county south of St. Louis. It’s a long story, but their prosecutor went full- time and I was an assistant prosecutor in St. Louis. I knew a number of the lawyers and judges, and even though it was an elective office, everybody agreed that they would file no lawsuits if I would take the job. And really turned the office from a part- time office to a professional. And I did it for two years and then I wound up going on the bench down there. I was judge down there for twenty years and I lived there. And recently we decided we didn’t need the big home anymore and we sold it and moved back to St. Louis, where I can take a bus to work. Very nice. I want to back up from that point because that takes us to the present, but I want to go back to when you were a kid because that’s really interesting. A couple of things. I’m wondering if you could describe what it was like growing up in that time period. Well, of course, I’m old enough to remember the beginning of World War II, because I would’ve been seven. I can identify that with the fact that in September of ’ 41 Stan Musial, my favorite all- time baseball player, came up to the major leagues, and being left- handed and Stan’s left- handed, was my idol. And I remember that vividly. My dad getting upset because I was seven, a little brat running around, and telling me to shut up because what was on the radio was so important, and we’re talking about December 7, ’ 41. So he was trying to listen. I think I gave you some of my American Legion oratory, and a lot of the— not pro- military, that’s not exactly what I’m talking to, but the service- to- country type of thing. World War II was a lot different because, we always— these guys go over to Iraq for eight months, which is tough, UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 3 but those guys went over like for four years, and they were gone, their families grew, everything. And so I sort of grew up. I would’ve been seven when it started, eleven when it ended— So you have a pretty good awareness of it. Yeah, and about the same time my dad was founding the Hotel Workers’ Union in St. Louis— Talk about your dad a little bit. What did he do? My dad started out— I love the fact they ran away and got married because your parents never do anything like that. You know that, don’t you? [ 00: 05: 00] Right. That’s pretty wild for that— Pretty wild. And nobody even knew they were married for two years, until my sister came along, and then they had to admit it. But anyhow, so they didn’t get married because they had to get married. Right, they were already married. They were already married. My dad was born in Atlanta, Georgia, came to St. Louis when he was like eleven years old, and at sixteen he had to drop out of high school with my mother, got one semester of high school, which was a lot in those days. They were both born in ’ 02 [ 1902]. My mother was very bright, but in those days the old German kinder, küche, kirche. Do you know what those are? No. OK. Kinder is children, kirche is church, küche is kitchen. That was the women. My father was Irish, so he was a little more liberated than the old Germans that I grew up with. But the richest kid we knew in our class in grade school was the one who owned their own house, because his father worked for the Post Office. My dad came along and founded the union and got into politics and in 1944 ran for state legislature and was elected. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 4 Now, he was a bellhop at the hotel, is that what you said? Before he founded the union, then he was president of the union and business agent for the union. So that’s pretty remarkable. Yes. And if you look back, I’ve got the books about him, he was educated in parochial schools and then he went to labor college, not— never got at GED or anything— he just went there to take courses at St. Louis University, and he became an expert on labor law. That’s amazing. And he gets elected to the ’ 44 legislature and becomes a member of the commission that adopted the 1945 constitution for the State of Missouri. Really. So he had a hand in that. He had a hand in that. Because the joke always was, they made what was then justices of the peace, magistrate judges, and they had to be a lawyer. And they always said he was making a job for me, because I was Danny Curran’s lawyer. Everybody called me that when I was a little boy. And you want to know what type of judge I was? I was an associate circuit judge, which was the one that evolved. So he did make a job for me, as it turned out. Now, you used to spend a lot of time with him at the legislature? Yeah, I was at the legislature. When you were a kid? Yes. And my dad was a professional boxer also when he was young. Oh, really! And so I used to go down to the gym with him when I was upper grade school, early high school. Dan O’Keefe, who was a fireman, used to teach me how to box. Now, the side story is that I used UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 5 to always play handball with a man whose name I thought was Tony Pip. He was an Italian guy, he liked to lose weight, because I made him run, I was [ a] kid, and he used to buy me ice cream. In 1950 I’m sitting watching television and the Kefauver Committee on crime is there and they say, Would Anthony La Pippararo take the stand? And this guy was the head of the St. Louis Mafia. I had no idea. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have gone to have ice cream. I was liable to get blown up. But the joke always was, if somebody had ever touched me, they were in trouble with the Mob. But anyhow, yeah, I grew up a poor boy. What was your mom’s name? Helen Eckhardt. She was German. I always said she’s the only woman of German parentage that had three children that were 100 percent Irish. Yeah, and after my dad died, my mother went to work. She was probably the biggest baseball fan ever. And my mother and dad used to go— after we were all in college, I’m the youngest. I mean do you realize how rare it was in those days to have three kids and they’re all college graduates? [ 00: 10: 00] Well, yes. I think part of that is what you were talking about earlier with the rise of the middle class, and you were part of that. My dad once said, if he could make $ 100 a week for the rest of his life, he’d be satisfied. I make $ 83 an hour. OK? That’s a pretty good job. But you know what I’m saying. Well, you’ve far exceeded— I give myself in the context of what we were dealing with. It’s just to get you in context of what we were dealing with there. Absolutely. Well, different times. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 6 Different times than what you are dealing with now. But, my parents never owned a home; lived in apartments, all their lives, and when my dad died at fifty- five, my mother had to go to work because she couldn’t do it. What year did your father—? Fifty- seven. See, this is going to come into here because he was alive when I was out here. So let’s work up to that. So obviously you went to high school and college. Where’d you go to college? I went to a Catholic boys’ high school. And get it in context. My sister was number two in her class. My brother was number two in the class. Freshman year, I’m number one in my class. So you guys are pretty good students. So second year, I letter in three sports. I lettered in track, which I lettered in all four years. I lettered in baseball, and I lettered in boxing— which you remember I said I had done that— we had a boxing team. Now, my sophomore year, I was like number five in the class, but my junior year I’m number one and my senior [ year] number one, and overall I’m number two because I had to show I wasn’t a brain, if you know what I mean. Everybody [ thinks] you’re on this other planet. Now, I’m not ashamed of it. When you’re a kid, fifteen years old, it’s like you know everybody— and the weird thing, when I went to my fiftieth high school anniversary, everybody there thinks I was number one in the class, and I wasn’t. I was number two. Well, I’d say that’s still pretty good standing. And I think you’ve got like— you see a lot of what I did in high school. It was pretty amazing. I was extemporaneous speaker. I was a debater. I was American Legion oratory. I was Voice of Democracy. And I have a nice little medal from St. Mary’s High School for all- around speech UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 7 performances. I could write a little bit at that time. Wrote an essay on religious vocations that won the State of Missouri when I was in high school. So I was a hot dog. I was a little bit of a hot dog. But I was, now you’re not ashamed to say it, an intellectual hot dog. Well that’s not a bad thing. No, not a bad thing. But, you know, maybe some of this macho stuff, Mary [ Vincent Ward] and I were talking about it, about being out here at the blast and volunteering to jump out of airplanes and that, was a little hiding the intellectualism that was running around that background. Keep it under wraps a little. Keep it under wraps so nobody knew about it. Now, you were ROTC [ Reserve Officer Training Corps], correct? Right. And what inspired you to do that? Just good for college? I think $ 27.50 a month was part of it. When I graduated from high school in ’ 52, four guys out of my class went right into the military and were killed within four months in Korea, which gives you an indication of the times. And anyhow, I wanted to go to college. I was the youngest of three. My sister was already going to college. My brother was already going to college. The question of my family to me is, where are you going to college and what are you going to study? Right. So you were going to college. I was younger. My girls, my daughters had the same thing. Nobody ever asked them if they were going. They just went. They went. And so by the time they got to me, it was a given, and a good little Catholic boy went to “ Mizzou,” the University of Missouri, which was verboten in those days because you were UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 8 supposed to go to a Catholic college, and I was sort of revolutionary. And the story I remember [ 00: 15: 00] on that was my senior year, I had written this essay that had won the state on the importance of religious vocations, and the Brothers of Mary were all trying to talk to me about what I should really do in this world; I said no, I want to be a lawyer. Anyhow, and I got in bad trouble because they had a panty raid at Mizzou about April of my senior year, and this one brother had really been talking to me, and I got the paper that morning, I threw it on his desk, about the panty raid, and I said, Now, I’m sure I’m going. And he wanted to throw me out. I was a little cocky. Yeah. So you were in a fraternity? Yeah. It was a Catholic fraternity which is now Phi Kappa Theta. It was Phi Kappa; it’s now Phi Kappa Theta. But that’s the only way my parents would let me go is that you join the Catholic fraternity where I was sure about you. You’ve got to remember, I have a sister that’s a nun at this time, and that was it. And I really learned more about drinking beer than I did about going to church. But we won’t talk about that. College, I was a very average student. I didn’t excel academically or anything like that, and I never have understood why. One semester, I didn’t even buy any books. All sorts of different things going on. You know, why, just everything was going on, and I don’t know. And about that time, I found I had an arrhythmatic heart which people thought it was going to kill me by the time I’m thirty and I’m sitting here nearly seventy- one, so it didn’t. But anyhow, I don’t know, maybe that’s where I started getting onto being Mr. Daring— When you found out about the heart. Because I didn’t care. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 9 So now, you’re ROTC and you graduated college and you went into the military? Yes. And where did you first end up? Went down to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, which was the artillery officers’ training. Fort Sill? Yeah, Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Fort Bliss is going to come later. Fort Sill, Oklahoma is the artillery. So you started there— And I got there and I remember we all got our orders and some guys were going to Korea, even though the war was over officially. And I get Fort Lewis, Washington, which was at one time the port of embarkation to Korea, and I figured I was going over. I remember having a few drinks that night, because we all thought we were going over to Korea and I was, well, if I’m out the next morning, I wasn’t. And I go up there. I’m assigned what they call a “ bastard battalion.” It wasn’t assigned to a division artillery [ battalion], field artillery battalion, 155 howitzer, it was assigned to Sixth Army. So I’m assigned to that and I have this wonderful winter in the rain up at Fort Lewis, out in the field doing all kinds of things, and we’re a service battery, so basically we’re transporting artillery rounds. We weren’t really firing guns that much. And comes the spring and you— oh! And I met a colonel while I was there, Colonel Powell, and I can’t think of his first name. I know where he’s buried; I could take you to Arlington [ National] Cemetery and show you his burial place, but I can’t think of his first name, which I think is the first sign of old age. But anyhow, when I walked in and reported, I remember vividly being in Rawlins, Wyoming on the way, in a snowstorm, trying to get St. Louis radio to find out if my father had won the election. I mean it was the ’ 56 election. And I get up there like a day or two later and Colonel Powell says, Lieutenant, do you have a car? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 10 I said, Yeah, it’s out there. I had a “ Stevenson for President” sticker. And he says to me, You picked the wrong man. And I said, No, I picked the right man. The people picked the wrong man. At which time he laughed and he said, Are you a lawyer? And I said, No, I’m going to be one. And he was a friend of Melvin Belli’s, who is a very famous lawyer from San Francisco. Very famous lawyer from San Francisco. So he and I used to talk all the time. And his daughter came up one time for a dance and, eh, single lieutenant, she was little, I was little, take her out. I was the one he asked to escort her. He trusted me enough and I asked to escort her to the dance. And so he’s the guy that was in charge and he’s [ 00: 20: 00] sending people to [ Las] Vegas. I had a captain who was an idiot. I was in a unit that was going to Germany, and I wasn’t going with them. So you wanted out of there. I wanted out of there, and so I called Colonel Powell and he said, What job do you want? And I said, Special Services sounds pretty good to me. In charge of a movie theater, bars, I mean this sounds good. And that’s why I was a lieutenant and everybody else was— So you no longer wanted to be in that unit, you were hating the weather? Oh, yeah. Have you ever been to Fort Lewis? No. The saying is, “ If you can see Mt. Rainier, it’s going to rain. If you can’t see it, it’s raining.” And you were at attention more than three minutes and moss grew up the side of you. So I hated it. And I’ve got sinuses anyhow. And so you wanted out, so the middle of the desert sounded like a good idea. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 11 The whole thing sounded like a great idea. And this is what he offered you. He gave you a choice of coming out to Nevada and being in charge of Special Services? That’s right. So you’re twenty- two and you come out to Nevada. I get in my car April 4, 1957. Memories— I looked these orders up, you know. Nineteen fifty- seven, I drove down the highway and I stopped at the Presidio [ San Francisco, California], which if you’ve ever been to the Presidio, it’s gorgeous. Sixth Army, get all my orders and everything straightened out, and I drove to Los Angeles, to Palos Verdes Estates where my cousin lived, visit them, and hit the highway from Los Angeles. I got here around April 11 or 12, I would think. That’s basically what I remember. So what’d you think of the [ Nevada] test site when you first saw it? Well, the first thing I see is Vegas. I stopped in Vegas. And I pulled up to the Sahara Hotel, which winds up coming in out of this whole year. And there was a movie at the time, Meet Me in Las Vegas or something, with Dan Dailey, the dancer, in it, and the first person I ever saw in Vegas was Dan Dailey coming out of the Sahara to get in a car. And I thought this was the glamour spot of the rest of the world after seeing this movie. And so then you get on the highway north and you make the turn at Indian Springs. It’s a little different than the city. It’s a little different. And you know all of a sudden we’re in this land of— I mean I was familiar with the wooden barracks- type thing. When I was at Mizzou, you still had some of the World War II buildings, so I was familiar with that temp building. And you know we’re up there. Younger officers were in a barracks. We didn’t have a BOQ [ Bachelor Officers’ Quarters] or a UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 12 private room. We were just in the barracks, and there was a parking lot outside the barracks that the coyotes used to run around in. You’d have to chase them off when you went to get your car, you know, get out of here, get out, doggie. They didn’t bother anything but they were out there and they’d howl at night. It was really interesting. We were sort of on the, I want to think it would be north end of the camp. I’m not sure, but I recall that you went in toward Mercury and you go to the left to Desert Rock, and then you hooked another right once you got in Desert Rock, which would mean that street was running north and south. So you were in there pretty far. Oh, we were in the back. Yeah, we were in the back. And the theater and the two— when you see the picture with the two— with the concrete pads, there are two big concrete pads, and the one on the side towards Vegas is going to be the mess hall, and the one on the other side is going to be the theater, which I was in charge of, so I know where it was. Yeah. And the mess hall, we let the cooks come to the show free and we ate in the middle of the night. Yeah. A little do- for- do, you know what I mean? That’s why I know where both of them were. Did you know what the Nevada Test Site was prior to coming out? Were you familiar with it, and were you familiar with what was going on here? I’m really trying to go back and I can’t remember. Because it’s still fairly new at this point. You talked to my wife yesterday and she said, knowing me, it was sort of the controlled danger type thing. That I tried to jump out of airplanes and I only weighed 118 pounds and you had to be 135 to pull the [ para] chute. So I needed something else to do whatever I wanted to prove my [ 00: 25: 00] manhood or whatever you want to call it. Still sort of a little cocky, swaggering. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 13 So talk about a little bit what your job was specifically with the test site, because it sounds like you did a variety of things but one of your main jobs was to coordinate the entertainment. I was in charge of the theater, the sports program. My office was in the library, which will be on the other side of the mess hall. It’s right there. That was where we had the library for the troops, and we had a sports program. We had tours to— we didn’t do much of that. We did that early and we didn’t do that later on, because we had groups of people come in. But my main job was to be sort of the liaison between Vegas, and really more than Vegas, the entertainment group, the variety club. Are you familiar with the variety club? Yeah, but explain what it is in your— It was the charitable arm of the entertainment people. And part of their thing that they contributed was to entertain the troops who were at Camp Desert Rock. Now, you’re in the Army, correct? I don’t think we stated— Oh, yeah. Artillery. Field artillery. I wasn’t a lawyer. Not yet. No, not even close. So you’re now out at the test site and you’re coordinating between the variety club, you’re bringing entertainment out to Camp Desert Rock, yes? That was part of it. And my wife loves the story, the one sergeant who hated the captain as bad as I did and wanted to get out of Fort Lewis, I got him out of there, and the captain who was an idiot didn’t know it, and he came and reported to me. He was my sponsor. He said, Lieutenant, Sergeant Little reporting for duty, and he started laughing and he said, Captain said, “ Where’d you get these orders from? Do you know anything about it?” And he said, You swore me to secrecy. And that was our captain. And he [ Little] was single. He was from L. A. He loved coming down. Anyhow he said, You ought to have UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 14 heard the names he called you, Lieutenant. There wasn’t a thing he could do about it because you had the colonel’s signature on it. Anyhow, so Bob Little and I used to drive in— Bob Little? That was the sergeant, yeah, and I used to drive in, and there were two ’ 56 staff cars on post. Everything else was ’ 52 because of the desert and everything. And we had one because we came into Vegas, and the general had the other. But both of them, if there was a general on post, I lost it because they had general’s plates on them. And of course they were covered. And we used to pull in and we’d come into Vegas and we’d drive about the first sixty miles and I’d sit in the front seat and we’re talking, and then we’d come into Vegas and I’d get in the back seat, and we’d wheel to mainly the Desert Inn or the Sahara, the two places we went, and he’d wheel that car in there and pull it up, the general’s plate cover was on there, and he’d get out and he’d go around to the back and snap that door open and salute, and everybody’s waiting for some general or something and here was a second lieutenant. We used to laugh. We thought it was funny. We did it all the time. Really impressed people. But Bob was like a year older than I am. So you guys were having a ball doing that. Yeah. So what kinds of entertainment did you bring out there? We started the first few weeks, we had a stage out there, sound system. In fact, I think that one thing says I was building the— That’s really interesting. I was in charge of it. I wasn’t building it. I didn’t know that there was a stage out there till I saw that. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 15 There was a stage out there and we had a sound system. We had dressing rooms for the people. I know we can’t go out there because of the weather, but I could probably find it. Where was it, do you remember? It was back in that back part where we were, because that was where it was open where the parking lots were and everything. It was the north end. It was pretty well open. As I recall, it was over there. Anyhow, the first one we had was Jeanette MacDonald, who was a singer. Johnny Puleo, the little midget in Harmonica Gang? Yes, a bunch of little midgets played in Harmonica. I remember that. I don’t know. I get a little lost on which one. Then we had Ming & Ling, the Chinese Hillbillies. It was father and son, and they were filthy, dirty Chinese comics [ 00: 30: 00] known as the Chinese Hillbillies. And the China Doll Review, which was eight of the cutest little Oriental girls you ever saw in your life. And they came up. I remember that. And then the third one was supposed to be Teresa Brewer. And she was at the Sahara. And she gets sick. And they tried to get Louis Prima to come out because he was there. Louis was afraid of the bomb. I’m serious. So he didn’t want to come out. So he didn’t want to come out. And there was a mimic in there and I want to think it was Rich Little. I want to think so. And he is old enough. He was real young at the time. But I don’t remember exactly who it was, but that name rings [ a bell]. So anyhow, and they replaced Teresa Brewer with a girl by the name of Kay Brown, who was at El Rancho Vegas, which is going to burn down three or four years later, and she was a twenty- two- year- old girl singer, could do Teresa Brewer’s songs. And she is the girl that made the movie The Strip and introduced the song “ Give Me a Kiss to Build a Dream On.” And then got gypped out of it because at the end of UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 16 the movie, Louis Armstrong sings it. But she sang it at the Academy Awards. Make a long story short, she fell asleep right on this [ my] shoulder on the way back in. And there was all kinds of people, because I was in that car and Colonel Dan Gilmer was on the left— I was on the right side, Gilmer was on the left, and Kay was in the center. I didn’t wash my shoulder for about three or four months. No, seriously, she was an adorable girl. If you ever see the movie, you’ll understand. She invited me to come in and see the show, which we did. The star was Lili St. Cyr who was the stripper, and I got to see that show several times from backstage. And Joe E. Lewis, who was Pal Joey, the guy that got his throat slit by the Mob, was the comedian. She was the singer. And the headliner was Lili St. Cyr. Which is the way those shows used to run in those days. You always had a singer, comedian, and then you had the show. Anyhow, we became friends. Nothing more. You guys were just good friends. Good friends. We were the same age. Talked. I was making $ 222 a month and I could eat free because she worked for El Rancho. That’s a good deal. And we wrote back and forth, and then as things would be— I would say she was probably— she was a year older than I am, actually. But she probably got remarried or something; and I’m going to law school. You know how it is. Things go on. Yeah, life just— Life goes on. And very nice. Very nice person. I think a great singer, although my wife says, I don’t think she sings that well. But anyhow. So you brought entertainment out. Yes, and so those were shows that we did out there. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 17 OK. And you also took troops in to the city, correct? Then it got too hot. So your stage was outside. Yes. At the test site. Now we’re getting into the end of June. Because I know she was there at the end of June, and I know her birthday’s July 2, and one of the first times they came in was her birthday, I know that. My memory’s not bad, is it? It’s pretty good. Anyhow, so then we could no longer do that, and the hotels would give us on a Sunday afternoon the room. Which is? The showroom. And the soft drink companies of Las Vegas, we varied it, would donate two sodas per soldier we brought in. We couldn’t have liquor because a lot of the people were under twenty- one. And we used to bring them in the buses because we had all the buses to go out to the desert, to go out to the site. And we used to bring them in, and then we’d stage them coming back, so if somebody wanted to stay, you know— They could stay longer or leave earlier. Yeah, leave earlier or whatever they wanted to do. First show I remember was George Gobel,